


What You Don't Know

by finisterre



Series: Life During Wartime [6]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Apocalypse, Headcanon, M/M, Post-Colonization (X-Files)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 02:13:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1762669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finisterre/pseuds/finisterre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie Scully, secrets, and the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Don't Know

When I was a kid, no phone was ever left unanswered just in case it was Dad calling from on board ship. He got so little time and called so infrequently that every one of us knew the procedure from the minute we could reach the phone: (a) pick up; (b) get mom immediately, no matter where she is. Even when he was home we used to do it; maybe we wanted to prove to him what well-drilled brats we were.

To this day when I hear the phone, the old man's baritone rumbles through my head: "You should always answer the telephone, you never know when it might be important."

Sorry, Dad. Charlie's messed up again. 

I can't stand to stay still in here. If I lie down the strip lighting’s buzz fills my brain but there's little point standing up. I can touch the walls on both sides of the bed and you can't get a whole lot of exercise pacing the twelve feet from outside wall to door. I know. I've tried.

I catch sight of my reflection in the tiny, high window. One of the many reasons I left the Navy was that I was tired of being some pale Xerox of Dad and Bill, never able to match up to their expectations. So it's ironic that the guy staring back at me resembles the old man so much -- the way he looked when we were kids, in the hours before he went to sea: all pinched scowl and worry lines. My hair is even receding in the same places.

Bill always said I would look like Dad when I was older. It's a shame we don't see each other these days because there's nothing he likes more than being proven right.

My brother, being the obedient son, would have answered the call; he would have heard the warning. Of course, the obstinate asshole would've ignored it because it originally came from Mulder... 

I grin at that thought for all of a second before I remember Tara and Matthew, which leads me back to my own sons, I start wondering whether David and Mark are all right and before I know it, my goddamned hands are shaking again.

I think perhaps if I knew what was going on, I could cope better – the reality is usually less traumatic than the scenario your imagination conjures up. But perhaps I already understand too much about what is happening outside these four walls.

I wish I could speak to Dana.

When we were teenagers, and Missy and I were competing for the title of Scully family fuck-up, I thought she was the most insufferable know-it-all on God's earth. I know her better these days and I think her calm logic would be comforting right now. 

I think about the messages I left for Jon. I told him not to go home because the cities weren't going to be safe, but the minute the words came out of my mouth I knew how foolish I sounded. 

In the end I ran out of ways to phrase it. In my last call I just told him I loved him. If that doesn't make him realize something is wrong, nothing will.

It would be easy to blame him for this. Easy but unfair. 

It started with a phone call five days ago. 

Jon and I were having same fight we'd been having for more than six months. Jon wants me to move west with him. He thinks you should never have to hide who you really are; I think it's imperative if I want to keep teaching -- and I do, it's the only job I've ever loved. Anyway, family and duty bound me to Moscow, Idaho. It's only a little college town but I like it. 

We reached a temporary truce, as we always do. The power went out for the fourth or fifth time that day so we lit a few candles round the bedroom and got on with patching up our differences.

"I don't want this to be a part-time thing any more," he whispered as he moved across my body, but I pretended to be too lost in the moment to hear what he said.

Some time later, the phone rang in the hallway and we both groaned, heads thumping back on the pillows.

"Leave it," Jon said, running a hand through sweat-darkened hair. 

I had the bedroom door half open by the third ring but something made me turn. The look he cast after me reeled me back in. "Leave it. Please, Charlie.” 

I didn't want to argue with him – he was heading out to visit his sisters in Stockton and I knew I would not see him for days. I wanted those last few hours we had to be sweet. 

The machine was already halfway through its spiel: "...not here now, please leave a message and I'll get back to you."

I made my decision and pushed the door shut. There were three short beeps as I leant back against it, enjoying cool wood against hot, bare skin.

One long tone as I grinned at Jon.

"Are you screening? Look if you're there, pick up... “

Mom. We don't speak much, perhaps because I'm sick of dealing with the hum of disapproval that underlies every word she says. I padded toward the bed, where I couldn’t hear her.

The last thing I heard her say, in that formal tone she takes with me these days, "Charles, there's something I have to tell you..." 

Quick quiz: your mom is on the phone and the guy you love is sprawled naked on your bed, licking his lips. Which way do you jump?

Exactly. 

She had called at a little before four. A little after eight, as Jon sped off west to see his family, I pressed 'play'. Four hours too late.

I was mentally preparing for another conversation full of arid silences. Instead I got a message that made my legs fold under me. "I want you to listen to me, listen carefully now, Charles..." she had said, her odd tone coming through despite the scratchiness of the tape.

"Pack a bag - just like we did when we used to go camping with your dad - and go up into the hills with Mark and David. Adrienne too. I know you don't like guns around the boys but if you can get a hold of one, grab it. Take as much as you can carry, honey, pack like it's for weeks. Take everything you would want to keep."

She had tried to sound calm. "I know how you and Bill feel about Fox Mulder but he thinks there's going to be some kind of emergency this weekend."

Even now I feel a brief flicker of irritation that she lumped me in with Bill again, that she knows me so little.

"Mulder says we have to get away from the towns because it's not going to be safe soon. Don't worry about me, I'm going to go with your sister and Mulder. Please believe him, Charlie. Please believe me." 

There was a pause so long I thought the damned machine was on the fritz again. Then: "Charlie... I know we've disagreed over the way you live your life, but I'm your mother and I love you." 

And that was it. She was gone. 

"Please believe me," she had said.

The thing was, I already believed. I'd been following my sister's career for a long time.

* * *

When you hear bad news there are always a few minutes when your brain refuses to process the information in any useful way. In this case, I switched on the TV. In between brief buzzes of static and the college football scores, they were saying that an unknown group of hackers had infiltrated power and telecom company computers and were causing havoc - but hey, not to worry, the blackouts and communications problems would all be over by Monday morning.

Once I'd had my moment in the stupid zone, I picked up the phone. There was no reply from Mom or Dana. Next I called Adrienne, but there was no reply. That immediately worried me; she'd told me she planned to stay in because her new guy, Irvin, might be coming over. Her subtle way of telling me not to drop by to see the kids just because I was at a loose end.

I wondered if she might have left Mark and David with her mom, so I called Mrs. Slovo. My ex-mother-in-law hated me from the moment I got Adrienne pregnant – and she sure as hell detests me now – but I was pretty sure she wasn't lying when she said she hadn't seen Adrienne or the kids for a couple of days. 

Adrienne only lives four blocks away from me, so I sprinted down the rain-slicked back streets to her house, tired muscles jittering from the adrenalin.

All the time my feet were pounding into the road I was thinking 'I hope I get there and David and Mark are asleep and she gets furious at me for waking them up. I hope she's got that pompous asshole Irvin Ridley there, even though he's not good enough for her. I hope she answers the door with a red face and bedhead and tells me to go to hell.'

Anything would have been better than the scenarios playing out in my head.

At Adrienne's the lights were blazing. I hammered on the door and pressed my cheek against the window trying to see past the slats of the blinds. Nothing.

Then I tried the handle; the door was unlocked. The kitchen was still warm with the smell of cooking. Two small plates were on the table with the messy remains of half-eaten meatloaf congealing on them. In the living room the hazy blue flicker of the TV revealed nothing but empty shadows. 

I moved upstairs, the back of my neck starting to ice over. In each room the drawers were open and closet doors were ajar. 

David's room looked as though a thief had ransacked it. It always looks that way but I could tell his closet was near empty. I checked by his bed and shelves for his favourite book. Bill sent it a couple of months ago, knowing it would piss me off. It was one of those glossy kid's books full of exploded schematics of world war two planes, tanks and ships -- part of Bill's recruitment drive for a third generation of Scully servicemen. David loves it. I closed my eyes as I realized that it was gone too.

I slipped into Mark's room. Something crunched under my boots and I stepped back to see a spray of Lego pieces like bright pebbles on the dark blue carpet, the plastic container lying on its side on the shelf. Little Lego men smiled up at me from the folds of the few T-shirts left in the open drawer below. 

It was as though Adrienne had decided to take off on the spur of the moment. Sure, I'd take off in a second if I knew Irvin Ridley was going to stop by, but my ex-wife isn't like that. It didn't compute that Adrienne would get the same kind of message as I had, yet the house was empty; there was no note, and the only message on the answering machine was mine. 

Once I got back home, I hurled possessions into my big sports bag. Clothes. A first aid kit. A hunting knife the old man gave me that has never once been used for its rightful purpose. I threw in four or five family photos, still in their frames. Not much to show for a life. 

I left the bag open on the bed, in case I thought of anything else and went into the room the boys share when they stay over, thinking I could pack some stuff to give them next time I saw them. 

I was clinging fiercely to that thought when I heard a noise from downstairs. I stopped breathing, moving, for a second. Nothing. 

Then there it was again, a muffled thump and a man's soft curses. 

I picked up the baseball bat I bought Mark for his ninth birthday last summer and hefted it in one hand to gauge its weight, the damage it could cause. 

I slipped out of the room and edged down the stairs.

A fuzzy dark shadow fell across the hallway carpet as I reached the bottom. I flattened myself against the wall and my fingers tightened on the rubber grip. I was ready to knock this fucker's head into next week.

"For Christ's sake, Charlie, it's me!"

A strip of light from the street lamp outside fell across the intruder. A lean, tall man, wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed hat, more than 20 years older than me and looking every one of them right now, with his hands up and his watery blue eyes wide with panic. 

Andrew Aslaksen – your friendly neighbourhood hacker.

Aslaksen has lived next door to me for the past four years. He's a strange guy and his ideas are way out there but at least he's not one of those militia nut jobs that see the hand of Satan in everything from PBS to Pokemon. 

He runs a small computer business from his garage; everything from repairs to tutoring. At times over the past year or so I've needed certain pieces of information – classified information – and he taught me how to get it. He knows I've been looking at things I shouldn't.

I grabbed a fistful of his black shirt and pushed him into the wall with one hand, the bat raised high in the other. Aslaksen's hat hit the wall, slid over his nose and off his head, revealing stringy gray hair. "What the fuck are you doing creeping around my house?" I snarled.

"Charlie, get your hands off me! I'm here to help you."

"Then tell me, what the hell are you doing in here?" I wanted to shake the answers out of him.

"I'm looking for you, you stupid asshole," he barked. "I came to warn you."

My fist unclenched, leaving a stretched twist of fabric on Aslaksen's chest. I let the baseball bat fall back on my shoulder, but I didn't back away. "Go on," I said.

Aslaksen let out a puff of air and assessed me, running his thumb and index finger down that stupid Zapata moustache of his. There was a long pause. "You know already, Charlie, don't you?"

"Know what?" I snapped, much more comfortable with irritation than the clawing fear I felt. 

"They're moving the troops out at Ellens and Mountain Home. Phones and power keep going out. Goon squads picking up troublemakers across the state. It's starting, man. _They_ are taking over."

I wasn't entirely sure who "They" referred to, as Aslaksen had previously used the term to refer to "evil forces" as varied as the federal government, Microsoft and the New York Yankees. "How do you know?"

"Encrypted email from my compadres," he said, "before the phone lines went down. How do _you_ know, man? Your sister?"

"My mom." Suddenly I had the urge to giggle at the absurdity of that. "Can you believe it? My mom told me."

"You need to get out of here, Charlie."

"I can't find my sons or Adrienne and their place is cleaned out. I don't have time for this, Andy," I snapped, turning my back on him and going back upstairs to my bedroom. He followed me, talking to my back the whole way.

"I gotta tell you something. While you were out I saw a couple of suits sniffing around this place. Big-ass car with out of state plates. Have you thought that they might have taken them? People are being taken all across the country."

I felt pressure building behind my eyes like a headache, and a desire to lash out at anything. "What would they want with a nursery teacher and two kids? That makes no sense at all." 

"Keep your voice down," hissed Aslaksen. "It's because of you. It's because of your sister."

"Because of me? Why?"

"Guys like us, we know too much," he said.

Dark laughter bubbled out of me before I could stop it. "Would you listen to yourself? We _know_ too much? I teach fucking high school math and you're a right-wing paranoiac with a Clint Eastwood fetish. We've hacked a few files together, that's all."

"Pull yourself together. And I'm not a right-winger, I'm a techno-anarchist," Aslaksen replied sourly. "Big difference."

"Whatever. We are not that important."

"Who are you trying to convince?" Aslaksen asked in a harsh whisper. "I don't see your kids. I do see men watching the house.”

He walked over to where my bag lay open on the bed and picked up a silver-framed picture of Dana, me and Missy at Mark's christening. He pointed at my younger sister. 

"I know what she's into and so do you. They don't want guys who know – people like you, me, your sister – causing panic, so they take someone close for leverage. I don't have anyone close. You do."

I grabbed it and put it back, almost breaking the zip as I shut the bag. "So what do you suggest?" 

Aslaksen was eager to share his plan. "I know some people who prepared for this. They're holed up maybe 90 miles out of town. It's safe, a bunker."

"Andy," I said, a warning note in my voice, "I have to find my kids."

"These guys know what's going down; they may know where your kids have been taken." There was an odd pleading note in his voice. "Come on, man. It's not so far and I need someone to read the map. If they can't tell us anything I promise we'll drive back into town tomorrow, keep looking. What else you gonna do?"

* * *

We were deep in a hilly, featureless forest somewhere in the Sawtooth Range. It was dank with last night's rain and dark in the grey morning light. 

We had driven for hours in Aslaksen's battered pick-up. As we crawled along the tracks, my few possessions bounced around behind the seats, stowed on top of Aslaksen's shotgun. 

Aslaksen and me, we barely spoke. I was wound so tight, and really, what was there to say? Aslaksen was unusually twitchy but these were weird circumstances. I felt sure I was missing something important, as if it was on the very edge of my vision and if I wasn't so tired, if I just turned for a proper look...

"We're here." The sudden rumble of Aslaksen's voice startled me.

"Here" was a compound, built into the rock where mountain escarpment met the rising forest floor, invisible even from the air. There was a stockade with wide, heavy wooden doors, the timber darkened and weathered as if it had been built years ago. I could see the glint of razor wire where the top of the stockade merged with the forest canopy. The only part that didn't blend in was a flagpole, with a red and white something draped damply around it.

At the sound of the engine cutting, a short, balding, barrel-chested man dressed all in black emerged from behind a broad trunk. He trained a semi-automatic on us. 

Aslaksen's knuckles whitened around the wheel. "Let me deal with this."

"What? No red carpet?" I said, as my pulse thundered.

Aslaksen plastered a smile on his face, his voice all false bonhomie. "Hey, Don," he called. "You remember me. Andy Aslaksen. There's not much time. Let us in."

The other man lowered the gun by maybe five degrees. "I thought we already told you to get lost."

"I had a deal with Venables." 

I tried to recall Aslaksen mentioning the name.

"Yeah? Venables thinks you're an asshole," Baldie scoffed, raising the gun again. "This isn't the ark and Venables isn't Noah. We don't just let you in because you came along two by two." 

Aslaksen's temper gave way and he reached back behind the seats. I thought, Jesus, the idiot's going for the shotgun, we're going to get killed here. 

Baldie thought so too. "Get your fucking hands where I can see them," he shouted, snapping into a firing stance. 

There was a second guy with a gun up on a parapet about 50 yards away, crouched low. Shouts from inside the stockade hung in the still air. There was a rasping sound behind me.

I turned back to Aslaksen to say something but he'd already grabbed something. My bag gaped open, a pair of sweats half pulled out.

Aslaksen slammed the truck door hard and walked over to Baldie. I squinted to see what he had in his hands and caught a glimpse of silver as he thrust the object in Baldie's face. He said something I didn't catch. 

"So what?" Baldie snapped. 

"Are you blind?" Aslaksen jabbed a thumb at me. "He's her brother, Don." 

Baldie stared for a moment and signalled to the other shooter. "Hand me your guns and drive on through.”

It was like a thousand small bugs skittering across my skin, a powerful sense that something was very wrong.  
Aslaksen opened the truck door and handed me the picture. "What was all that about?" I asked.

He wouldn't meet my eyes. "Nothing," he said. "Some of those guys are assholes, that's all."

"No, Andy. The photo. My sister." I was pleased by the steadiness of my voice, everything considered.

"I was supposed to come alone but these guys ... they know Mulder and your sister and they owe them a few favors, so that's why they're letting you in."

Aslaksen was like the kids I catch sneaking out of school for a smoke or writing on the bathroom wall, that same half-defiant, half-ashamed look on his face. 

"Andy," I said, clamping a hand around his wrist. "What's going on?"

"I need to hand over the gun," Aslaksen replied dully, shaking his hand free and collecting the shotgun from behind the seat. 

There was shouting and the stockade doors opened, revealing lines of parked pick-ups and, on an inner set of doors, a large painted symbol: a red background, a white circle, inside it a swastika. These people killed FBI agents, they didn't owe them favors. 

Aslaksen hadn't brought me here because I was a friend, to help me find anyone or even because he needed some stupid asshole to read the goddamned map. It was because he thought I was his ticket to safety. 

It only took a couple of seconds to slide across into the driver's seat, a moment more to gun the engine and reverse backwards in a spurt of mud and dead leaves. The wheel span under my sweaty hands as I turned the pick-up and roared away, even as Aslaksen ran back towards me, yelling panicked obscenities. 

Five shots rang out.

* * * 

As I drove through the twisting maze of logging roads, watching the gas gauge slip towards zero and praying that I would hit a town soon, I ran through every possible explanation for what could have happened to the kids. 

Why would two kids from small-town Idaho be of any consequence to some shadowy, nameless Them? 

Because their dad got curious and decided to find out what his sister was up to. 

I drew attention to myself. No matter how you play it, this is my fault. 

Maybe this was how it felt all the time for Dana. All I know is the fear nearly suffocated me.

* * *

I got nosey after Dana got sick.

Maybe it was a manifestation of guilt because she’d almost died and I only made it out to see her when she was already getting better. Maybe I thought I could understand properly what happened to Melissa if I could work out exactly what my sister was into. 

Tracking it down wasn’t simple but it wasn't impossible either. You wouldn't believe the messy electronic fingerprints we leave over everything. I get all the reports I can under the Freedom of Information Act. 

Since she got better we email or phone each other every week and I use the few references she's made to where she is and what she's doing to cross-check everything. If you're willing to plough through pages and pages of dull documents and the sight of the words "[material redacted]" doesn't bring you out in hives, you can piece it together. 

I’d never been great with computers but Aslaksen taught me how to hack a little and then I started retrieving my own information.

At first it was like a game, trying to puzzle it out. But the more I discovered about what was going on, the more there was to find -- and the more wacky it all seemed: allegations of secret experiments, gene mutation, deadly diseases and at the center of the vortex, my sister and this man, Mulder. 

Bill’s theory was that it was all bullshit, Mulder was a madman and Dana was playing Tammy Wynette. 

I couldn’t buy that – Dana’s never been like that. And Missy, whose judgment I still trust best, always said that he was a good man. And everything I read said that they were onto something big.

So by the time I finally got to meet Mulder, a year ago, I was almost insane with curiosity. 

They were on some shitty job near Pullman and one night I opened the door to find Dana on my doorstep. That alone was uncharacteristic behavior so I knew something was wrong. She introduced me to the tall, good-looking guy she had in tow.

So this was Mulder. Oh Dana, honey, you have taste, I thought, taking in the rangy height of him, the swimmer's shoulders encased in what was, if I wasn't mistaken, a very expensive suit. 

They stayed for dinner, I called Adrienne and she brought the kids over, and we had a great evening. I was expecting him to be arrogant but he turned on the charm. David practically hero-worshipped him and announced his intention to join the FBI as soon as possible, Mark was delighted to be the center of his aunt's attention and even Adrienne and I remembered why we'd once been best friends.

Later I asked them if they wanted to stay overnight rather than go back to some crappy motel. I only have one spare room and they argued over who would take the couch in the den, which answered at least one of my questions.

When Mulder was upstairs washing up, I talked to Dana. She admitted the job was depressing her – they were being punished for some mistake to do with that bombing in Dallas, she said – and she just needed to see a friendly face. 

I wanted to tell her I admired the hell out of her for what she was doing but I knew what kind of reaction I'd get if she knew I had been checking up on her. 

So in the end all I said was: “The FBI wasn't a mistake. I know what dad said, but it wasn't."

"I hardly think investigating manure in Idaho was what he had in mind for me," she said, leaning her head back on the sofa and closing her eyes.

"You're doing something good. You and Mulder, what you do, it is important."

"Oh Charlie, that's sweet of you, but we catalog fertilizer deliveries and do background checks on janitors."

"But you haven't always, have you? The X-Files were more than that." 

I don't know why I expected an answer. What was she going to say? No, I chased mutants and UFOs and monsters I don't believe in? I proved six impossible things before breakfast?

She sat up and stared at me steadily. "Yes. Yes they were. But that's in the past now," she said, her look giving me a clear 'back off' signal.

For a second it was as if we were children again. I half expected one of us to start singing 'I know something you don't know'. I gave in. 

One day, I thought, I'll tell her what I know, but not today.

"I like Mulder," I said slyly.

For the first time that entire evening, she grinned and I finally recognised in her the brace-faced brat who had always been annoyingly good at keeping secrets. "Oh you do, do you?"

"Very charming, Dana. He's a good-looking man," I said. "I'm surprised Bill didn't mention it."

"Yeah. Mysterious, huh?" 

Mulder strode into the room. I handed him a beer and winked at Dana. She rolled her eyes, which only made me laugh more. He sat in the chair opposite us. "What?" he asked, thrown off-balance. 

Dana shook her head, kissed me on the cheek. "I'll leave it to you to field that one. Good night."

She stopped by Mulder's chair and bent towards him and for a second I thought she was going to kiss him as well. Maybe he thought so too, he looked panicked. But at the last second she leaned towards his ear and whispered: "Watch it, Mulder, I think you're his type."

His eyes widened, then he looked up, saw her face and it was as if that gave him permission to enjoy the joke. He smiled back at her and she put a hand on his shoulder. His automatically came up to meet it, stroking her fingers. She gave his shoulder a quick squeeze and then she was gone. 

I thought, Dana, who the hell are you trying to fool?

"So," he said a little awkwardly.

"Don't worry about the wisecrack. You're not really my type," I said. "We just have a lot in common."

His eyebrows lifted. "Really?"

"Yeah, Bill thinks we're both assholes."

He grinned and relaxed a little. 

"You and my sister, you've been together a long time." He nodded. "You'd go to the ends of the earth for her, right?" I said pointedly, thinking of a weird expense report I'd dug up a week ago.

His expression was hard to read in the dim light. "Charlie, are you asking me if my intentions toward your sister are honorable?" He sounded amused. 

I nodded, just to see what response that would provoke.

"Yeah," he said. "Such as they are, and in as far as she'll let me." His mouth quirked up into an odd little smile as he raised his beer to his mouth and his eyes to the ceiling. 

"I know what's going on, Mulder."

He laughed softly. "There's nothing going on. Scully and me, we're just partners." 

I shook my head, still finding it odd to hear my sister called by her surname. After all those years in the Navy I kept thinking he was talking about me. "I'm not referring to that," I said. 

"Then what are you referring to?"

"I'm talking about the X-files."

"Not my bailiwick any more," he said, taking a swig of beer.

"They'll always be your bailiwick.”

He set the half-empty bottle down on the table and fixed me with a stare. "What _exactly_ has Scully told you?" he asked, his voice flint-hard. 

"If you think she'd tell me anything about her professional life you don't know her very well," His nod acknowledged that was true. "I've been doing a little background reading on the cases you work."

"Why?"

"I'd like to know how my sister ended up almost burning to death at Ruskin Dam." I realized I was starting to use my classroom voice and turned down the volume. "I'd like to know how come there was a dying child that Dana thinks was hers, that no one knew about until last year. I'd like to know how come Melissa got killed."

He flinched at my bitter tone and I added hurriedly: "Not that I take Bill's line on that. I know who was to blame for that and I'm glad the bastard is dead. But it's about more than just the stuff that affects my family. What about that flight that came down? What about Max Fenig? I've been to the memorial website for that guy and, believe me, it tells some very weird stories about his life."

Mulder gave a tiny smile. "Well, he was a very weird guy."

"There are ways of finding out these things, Mulder. I think you're involved in some dangerous shit and I think I know what's happening here."

His face hardened. "No. You don't."

"But..." I began.

He cut me off. "You don't know anything, Charlie. Keep it that way."

I recognized the expression. Like Dana's, it told me there was no point in even asking. I'd blown my chances.

I sighed. "Then at least tell me you'll look out for Dana."

"I try," he said, "but most of the time it's her looking out for me." He stood up. "Gonna turn in now. Thanks for dinner."

When I went to the bathroom at 4am that morning, the light in the den was still on. I heard whispers and started to smile until it became clear that this wasn't sweet nothings, it was a full-blown argument. 

"You're being paranoid," I heard Dana hiss. "How could he?"

He said something but it was low, short and hard to make out. 

"Mulder, my brother's a smart man but he can barely program the video."

I felt a brief flush of brotherly superiority that she'd got that wrong.

"I'm telling you, he's doing it," I heard Mulder say, his voice twisting up an octave in frustration. "You've seen his computer."

"My Mom has a computer," she replied. "It doesn't mean she's the next Donald Gelman or Kevin Mitnick."

His reply was too low to hear.

"Very funny," she said sourly. "And don't you dare, Mulder. I don't want him involved. Don't you dare say anything to him."

Say what? I tried to shuffle closer to the doorway but I stepped on the loose board without thinking. The voices stopped and I crept hurriedly into the bathroom.

When I got up the next morning they had gone, leaving only a sweetly bland thank you note. Dana was much more cagey in what she said to me about work after that but I carried on digging, thinking that one day I'd understand enough to force her to talk to me about it. 

Now I wish I'd pushed harder for answers.

* * *

I got back to Moscow at 8pm and everything was so normal that the events of the last 24 hours seemed like a bizarre dream. I wanted to run through the streets shouting 'wake up, don't you realize what's going on?'

But in the end I had two objectives: first, to find out what Aslaksen had on where they would take my sons and on Dana; and second, to destroy all those notes I had kept, just in case they could be used to trace Dana and Mulder. Just because I couldn't work out the cryptic references, it didn't mean others would have the same difficulty. 

Then I planned to listen to my mom for once and get the hell out of the town. Maybe from the mountains I could figure out the pattern of troop movements and work out where they were taking people. As long as I could be doing rather than thinking, I would be fine.

I sneaked into the back of my own place like a thief. A thief who had been preempted -- someone had been through the place, emptying drawers, smashing the crockery and ripping the backs of my chairs and sofa. They had taken the hard drive of my computer and all the disks as well as every bit of paper I had in my files. 

Luckily I always keep the important information out of the way of far better snoopers than these guys -- two insatiably curious boys. I lifted the loose hallway floorboard and there was my little stash of information and reports, covered in my blue scrawl. I put the floorboard back.

In the hallway, the answering machine registered two messages, both played. I hit the button, skipped past mom, and Jon said he loved me too but what the hell was I talking about? 

"Call me, Charlie," he whispered at the end, "I mean it. Please."

Against my better judgment, I tried but the phones were out again.

Then I crept to the back of Aslaksen's house. The door was locked so I wrapped a T-shirt round a brick and put it through the back kitchen window. Somehow I squeezed all 5ft 10in of me through the gap. 

As I jumped from the window ledge onto the glass-strewn kitchen floor, I imagined what would happen if I got caught and the world didn't end: the humiliation of the local math teacher getting arrested for burglary.

They hadn't tried to disguise the fact that they'd been through Aslaksen's place in a hurry either. There were papers all over the floor, his pictures had been pulled off the wall and out of their frames and the three computers on his dining table were all also minus their hard drives. Luckily I knew Aslaksen's secret -- like every good paranoiac, he keeps his favorite system well hidden.

A minute later I'd broken the small lock on the door, pulled down the ladder and climbed inside his attic. I didn't dare switch on the lamp as there's a tiny skylight at the gable end of the house that would have given away my presence if any watchers came back, so I booted up the computer and worked by its light.

Aslaksen hid his passwords at all times, so this really was a challenge of my newfound skills. Three times I had to reboot after his system shut me down, but the fourth, I did something right, I'm not sure what, and the data began to flow for me. I clicked through his directories and finally found the motherlode. An entire directory marked "Scully". I opened it.

Holy shit. There were files marked with my name, Dana's, Melissa's -- even Bill had his own little domain on Aslaksen's hard drive. I didn't have time to read this here so I bent to switch on the printer.

At that second there was a white-hot flash that cracked open the night sky and flooded the room with light. The monitor squealed and went black and I heard a boom like thunder. It was suddenly darker as the street lamps winked out. I think I realized even then that the power had gone off for the last time.

I hurried back to my house, pulled up the floorboard and retrieved the papers, then climbed into the car. Every light in town was off by the look of it. I remember thinking that I had to get out of there. But when I turned the ignition key in my car there wasn't even the faintest sputter from the engine. I cursed Japanese shit-heaps and ran to Aslaksen's pick-up but his was the same. It was dead.

The only thing to do then was to destroy my notes back at the house. I was going to walk into the woods and I couldn't carry them with me. I ended up sitting on the floor with all the curtains shut, tearing a year's work into confetti by candlelight and feeding the pieces into the fierce blaze I had stoked in my wood stove.

At some point, the lack of sleep caught up with me. I woke close to dawn on Monday morning on the floor, as boots kicked my front door in. Five soldiers armed with semi-automatics surrounded me before I could even reach for the hunting knife. They hauled me into the back of a van with a couple other frightened looking guys. It was the only vehicle moving on the empty roads. 

A kevlar-covered slab of muscle stressed the need for quiet by waving his AK-47. We were quiet. 

Eventually the van stopped at what looked like a military installation. They led me into a squat cinder block barracks and dragged me into a small room with no natural light. They questioned me for hours, always two of them, in shifts. Three of them were army, all ranked Major or above, the fourth wore no uniform but was military. He may have been ONI; he knew an awful lot about me and my background. 

Every question led back to Dana: where was she, had she told me anything, had she been in contact? I told the truth: I didn't know, I hadn't spoken to her in two weeks. 

Then they asked why I ran on Saturday, who did I meet on Sunday, why did I drive back to Moscow? I told them everything. All the time I thought I was being smart and evading them, I think they were tracking me. They must have thought I'd lead them to Dana. 

Then they brought out the pictures. First the pictures of us all when we were kids: Missy with me on her knee and Dana and Bill standing by our side that day we left Miramar for the last time; a picture of Dana from her high school graduation with me jealous and sulking in the background because I'd overheard one of the teachers telling dad I was fooling around in class and I knew he'd be furious when we got home; pictures from when we went to Connemara during the drought summer of 1977. 

One from my wedding day 12 years ago: me in the dress whites of a junior officer, my hair in an ugly buzz cut, trying to convince myself that my best friend was also the love of my life. Adrienne looking heavily pregnant and anxious, Dad and Mrs Slovo glowering at the camera.

These were pictures they could only have got from mom, which meant they had been through her place. 

Then they brought out pictures of me from maybe four years ago, just after I left the navy and just before I finally came out; surveillance shots of me looking incredibly shifty as I tried to slip into a gay bar. There were also pictures of me and Jon draped over each other when we were on holiday in St Kitts more than a year ago, shot with a telephoto lens. 

I felt a ripple of revulsion, maybe fear, as I tried to work out how long they had been watching me.

But the pictures that scared me were of Adrienne, Mark and David. They were taken recently, in a barracks like this one. Mark looked as though he was about to bawl his head off, David looked like the defiant teenager he's just a month away from becoming and Adrienne -- well, Adrienne just looked terrified. 

After seeing those I would have been ready to admit to anything from that time I shoplifted when I was 11 to the Kennedy assassination, if only they'd let me see my sons. 

But it went on and on until I heard someone scream: "I don't know anything and I don't know why the hell I'm here."

I swear to God I didn't realize it was me until a full five seconds after I'd said it.

Then they told me politely that the interview is over and led me away to this cell. I've been here ever since.

And now I remember the last thing one of the interrogators said to me before they left me for the last time. He was an older man, straight-backed and fit even though his hair was grey. High-ranking military, judging by how fast the guard on the door skipped to attention as he left, even though he was wearing a nondescript dark suit. I asked him why I was there.

"Why?" he said, and I looked up to see his thin lips twitch. The son of a bitch was amused, you could see it in his eyes. "We think you'll be useful to us."

"What for?" I asked, my voice stretched thin and cracking. "I don't know anything. What for?" 

The man smiled but his face gave no clues. "Leverage, Mr Scully," he replied and left the room.

**Author's Note:**

> Charlie Scully looked like Damien Lewis (now of Homeland fame), got his college sweetheart pregnant and ran away to sea, then came out, as much as a teacher in the 90s could come out. This was our head canon.
> 
> Back in the day, we had a lot of fun making up Watsonian background explanations for why we never saw Charlie, and indeed, destroying the world in restaurants across California. Thanks to Cofax and MN, whose universe it originally was, and Magdeleine and Fialka, who provided essential thinkery.
> 
> I gave this a quick tickle before posting here, but not a re-edit. 
> 
> After I wrote this I was contacted by some poor Andy Aslaksen who thought he was being targeted for mockery by his inclusion in this story. The name actually came from the Ibsen book of plays that was nearest my desk.
> 
> Naming characters is difficult. Sorry, Andy.


End file.
